Monday, May 12, 2014

You know what we need? A construction project manager. Our contractor, while being a nice guy that does really quality work, is pretty freaking sucky at communicating with the subcontractors and us. Our drywall guys weren't told that they needed to be done by today to keep the cabinet dude on schedule for tomorrow, to keep our tile guy on schedule for Thursday. So they worked only two hours on Friday, which means they won't be completely done until Wednesday. Cue the dominoes.

A common problem with remodels like ours it seems, is that we're considered a small project. The contractor is going to focus his team on their larger money-making projects, and will kick people over to the small projects when they have time. We hoped that they would just bust us out quickly so they could move on to their next project, but it's impossible to time when they're going to have competing projects. I think? I don't know if you can put a deadline date into a contract like this, with contingencies for unexpected problems that aren't the fault of the construction crew. A designer friend of ours said her contracts have deadlines, where if she goes long, the client gets a discount on the cost, but if she beats the deadline, she gets a price bump. I think that's smart. I should have suggested that before we got started!

Anyways, enough words. More progress pics. From start to finish to remind me of how far we've come.

Today:

Okay, starting to feel better...

Today:

Laundry room to bathroom:

Today:

New laundry room!

Today:

And window goes up!

Today:

So it's looking better, right!? Our light shining through the clouds is our wonderful tile and flooring expert, Don Kuskie. He has been so wonderful, coming over to meet with us, talk about the project, helping me to buy the cork and tile supplies, and keeping in touch by phone for progress updates. He was supposed to start our project today (last week?) but promised he is ready and waiting for us when we have the cabinets up and we have the green light for tile and flooring. He said he'd even work nights and on Saturday! He's the best. We'll end on that happy note.